He should have had other priorities.

In that moment, there was one focus, one target. The agent part of his mind knew that, and was already tracing the possibilities, bracing for contingencies, planning what to do. But when he opened his mouth to speak and no sound came out, he discovered that the agent part of him was no longer in control.

It seemed that part of him had died with her.

Her eyes were open, and he found himself staring into them as if they held the answers he was looking for. But they told him nothing, told him only that she was beyond his help, beyond anyone’s help. He still knelt by her side, calling her name blindly, as if he could bring her back by the sheer force of his will. He held her in his arms, and though he had never been a man who was given to praying, he prayed in that moment, prayed that by some miracle, some wonder of modern science or of chance, she would be saved.

"You’re going to be alright," he whispered uselessly, because the other words, the ones he had waited too long to say, would not come, even now.

He didn’t cry. Not because he was a man and he was strong and he wasn’t supposed to, but because the tears would not come. In some young and irrational corner of his mind, his fractured heart was still clinging to the notion that she would suddenly blink, and cough, and sit up. She’d look at him with those sparkling eyes as she pulled away a little, and then laugh at him for worrying.

He could hear the man behind him weeping openly, and he envied him that small comfort. They had been through so much, these two men, and now they shared the same grief for the woman they both had loved. It had lain there between them for these years, an unspoken understanding between men, a bond and a wall all at once, and now his inability to shed tears for her made a wave of isolation wash over him.

His eyes traveled from her face to the building across from them, which now stood silent and empty. His focus, he knew, should be on finding her killer, on finishing what had been started long before she had been shot. But what he should be doing had taken a sudden backseat to his pain, and he found that he couldn’t move, any more than he could cry.

So he knelt there on the hard ground and cradled her head on his lap, barely even registering the blood that pooled around them.

He had never felt so many intense emotions in such a short time before, and it left him feeling drained. The panic that had swept through him at seeing her leap in front of that bullet had been replaced by a welcome surge of relief when he had discovered that she was still alive, still fine. They had laughed together, the three of them, as the two men had helped her to her feet, and for a second or two, they had all been captured by the deception that life had suddenly returned to normal.

And then the world had been torn out from under him.

"Wow, I thought I’d die before I heard…" she had been saying as the bullet came out of nowhere to rip her off her feet, striking expertly between her eyes.

Any other day, he would have smiled at the irony of it.

Now, he could not imagine himself smiling ever again. What could be funny now that she was gone? What could possibly make him forget her for a second, even long enough for a smile to tug at his lips? Even memories of her, the ones that he had once looked back on with amusement, they would now be tainted forever. Because how could he remember her without seeing her as she was now, lying lifeless in his arms as her blood flowed to the ground around them?

She was taken from him then, and lifted onto a stretcher. He watched, and it was a scene he had witnessed hundreds of times before.

He saw her being wheeled away, with the other man who had loved her clutching her hand. He let them go without him, let him have his last moments with her. He didn’t move from his spot, and when someone came to stand in front of him, called his name, he waved them away impatiently. They hesitated for a moment, but then left him, kneeling alone on a rooftop surrounded and covered by the blood of the woman he had never allowed himself to love.

Only then did he feel the first tears sting his eyes. He let them fall, and while they did not heal, they comforted him.

For now, it was enough, just to cry for her.